America is in the heart by Carlos Bulosan
Discovering his America
To Bulosan, America is a world filled with hope, opportunities and struggles. There is freedom in America. Bulosan struggles to survive and works to earn money for himself. He is confused with the thought of America and has a blurred path to follow. He strives to keep a promise with America, striving to create the promise. He describes his hardships and struggles to survive in this country. When he realizes that America is the promise and he is striving to create it.
The people he has met at America have helped and destroyed his dream. His brothers have helped him through his journey but yet have been a bad influence to him. His brother, Leon, for example, in the beginning of the book, showed the strength in oneself, by going through the beating when supposedly the wife was not a virgin. Then he was forced to move out of the village due to shame and humiliation felt.
He later again saw him in the bus waving good bye for the last time. Leon is not mention in the book anymore. His whole family struggles to make a living and to pay off their burden and to help his older brother finish up school.
There is a quotation on page 14 that demonstrates the sacrifices given to help Macario, his older brother. The quote is:
Popular education was spreading throughout the archipelago and this opened up new opportunities. It was new and democratic system brought by American government into the Philippines and a nation hitherto illiterate and backward was beginning to awaken. In Spanish times education was something that belonged exclusively to the rulers and to some fortunate natives affluent enough to go to Europe. But poor people, the peasants, were denied even the most elementary schooling. When the free education that United States had introduced spread throughout the islands, every family who had a son pooled its resources and sent him to school.
The free education in the U.S. is very important, it foreshadows that Bulosan will go to the States to try to receive an education. And the family will try their best to help them. It showed how the Philippines were oppressed by Spanish and that the education only belonged to the rulers and natives.
Another quote demonstrates the struggle that Bulosan and his family went through to help support his other brother, Marcario.
We had deprived ourselves of any form of leisure and simple luxury so that my brother could finish high school. But even then he kept asking for more money, threatening that he would stop if we did not send him enough. The thought that he would really stop terrified us. (pg.15)
Bulosan uses the word “deprived”, meaning to remove or withhold something from the enjoyment or possession of a person. This word is very strong and meaningful. There was no leisure or any form of enjoyment because they had to sacrifice them for his brother. But yet his brother continued to ask the family for more money. They were terrified when he threatened to stop continuing his education when no money was received.
This quote "We in America understand the many imperfections of democracy and the malignant disease corroding its very heart. We must be united in the effort to make an America in which our people can find happiness. It is a great wrong that anyone in America, whether he be brown or white, should be illiterate or hungry or miserable."
In the last chapter, pg. 326, Bulosan ends with this paragraph, quoting:
Then I heard bells ringing from the hills-like the bells that had tolled in the church tower when I left Binalonan. I glanced out of the window again to look at the broad land I had dreamed so much about, only to discover with astonishment that the American earth was like a huge heart unfolding warmly to receive me. I felt it spreading through my being, warming me with its glowing reality. It came to me that no man-no one at all- could destroy my faith in America again. It was something that had grown out of my defeats and successes, something shaped by my struggles for a place in this vast land, digging my hands into rich soil here and there, catching a freight to north and to the south, seeking free meals in dingy gambling houses, reading a book that opened up worlds of heroic thoughts. It was something that grew out of sacrifices and loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines- something that grew out of our desire to know America, and to become part of her great tradition, and to contribute something toward her final fulfillment. I knew that no man could destroy my faith in America that had sprung from all our hopes and aspirations, ever.
This quote really touches me. It shows how much faith he had in America and how much he was willing to give. He continuously says “No man could destroy my faith in America.” He believes that this country will fulfill his promise to the world. He is so touched by his own and others struggles, sacrifices and hopes in America. Everything he has been through was through his own true will. All that he has given is for dream of fulfilling America’s promise. He believes America is in the Heart. It is up to you, you inside, deep down in your soul, to create the promise. And you to change it. Through this book he has enveloped so much, he has showed what he contributed to America and its promise. But through, the promise, he also faced reality, which is filled with the struggles he went through and the sacrifices that he faced. He, now, truly understands America is in the heart. He understands hope and aspirations, what he has accomplish.
His journey was through thorns and roses or as he quotes “his defeats and successes”. It is something that shaped him as a person. It has changed him to become a better person and to accomplish his goals. He has showed what he contributed to make America to its fulfillment. He knows that no man could ever destroy his hope, faith and dreams in America or what America has become. Bulosan has made the ending of this book, so touching, so heart filling, so close, so personal, so deep, that it is something that really makes you think and question what is America is in the heart. What is Bulosan trying to tell us? He has showed us the light of America but also the dark side. He demonstrates so much through this book. He takes the readers, the audience in to feel his pain and depression but also his faith in America. He has created a promise to fulfill and he is touched by the heart of others and how they have been touched by his. Through his writing, he is hoping to show people what America is. And he is hoping people can realize the promise and the reality faced in America. Bulosan writes to express his thoughts an feelings hoping other people can understand and feel the way he does about America’s promise. The promise in which you have to discover yourself. You have to discover your own true self and just listen to your heart. His writing has really been so deep and touching and how he struggled to become a writer. His desire to learn and be educated was huge from beginning to end of book. There was always hope in his life, he always had a desire to learn and write. This book is one of my favorites. It has showed me to not take things for granted and to know that they are many less fortunate people than you. Bulosan was very poor when he came to America, in hopes of a dream. This dream and promise began when in Pg. 69
“Who is Abraham Lincoln?” I asked Dalmacio.
“He was a poor boy who became a president of the United States,” he said. “He was born in a log cabin and walked miles to borrow a book so that he would know more about his country.”
This gives him hope that a “poor man” like him, can become someone powerful and have a strong opinion in which many people will listen to him. Bulosan is hoping to become someone like that. It gives him hope and strength.